Love ‘Jihad’ is an infamous phrase referring to an alleged campaign by people of a certain community as they forcefully convert Hindu girls under the pretext of love. Not just Hindus, but even Christians are being forcefully converted in states like Kerala.
NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma claimed that Kerala has ‘rampant’ love jihad, adding that they (alluding to Muslims) were attracting women (Hindus and Christians) and forcefully converting them in the state.
The infamous conspiracy theory claims that Muslim men target Hindu women for religious conversion to Islam by means like seduction, love, deception, kidnapping and marriage. Apparently, this is seen as Gazwa E Hind (a holy war) by Muslim extremists against India in a bid to bring in Shari’a Laws.
The youths of a certain community understand girls’ behaviour and they study them before utilising emotional appeals by using charm to attract girls into conversion by stimulating love. Shockingly, some Mosques in India are allegedly offering training and funds to charm boys for the cause.
This concept first came to light in our country in 2009 with alleged conversions in Kerala and Karnataka. Slowly, it started to spread across all states of the country. Earlier, UP CM Yogi Adityanath-led government decided that it will take serious measures to stop ‘love jihad’.
The most recent incident of Love Jihad came to light from Kushinagar of Uttar Pradesh. According to media reports, a Muslim youth Imran Hashmi changed his name to Sonu Shukla to befool Hindu girls. A girl who fell in love with him narrated the whole ordeal.
He told her that his name was Sonu Shukla. When the girl found out the real identity of the boy, she refused to be with him. He thereafter started forcing her to convert to Islam and marry him. Imran began to send nude photos and videos of the girl to her relatives and mentally tortured her to a point that she even thought of ending her life.
Meanwhile, her parents arranged marriage but Jihadi Imran began to send nude photos to her would-be husband. Her marriage was cancelled. Jihadi Imran went on creating a fake Facebook account of the girl to blackmail her. The girl had to bear all this only to save the social status of her parents.
She remained silent even though she was raped on multiple occasions. But eventually, she broke the ice. This girl valiantly narrated her ordeal to the police, but imagine how many girls are falling victim to Love Jihad every day and they are forced to bear the pain silently.
Some liberal lobbies of India always play down the cases of love jihad and claim this is all a cooked-up story by BJP. If there was really no love jihad, why Muslim youths would hide their true identity from the girls? Why do they later start forcing their Hindu girlfriends to convert to Islam (an Arabic religion).